Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Arioch]

It's not just volume to consider. While the raise in mass for the larger hull and larger surface to be armored may be not that much to consider, there are definitely other considerations, like energy consumption for life support (heat, air filtration and so on), and, and here comes the most important consideration, a larger ship definitely has a larger scanner footprint. Be it any kind of electromagnetic emissions or absorption, gravimetric or maybe other tech we wouldn't even dream of. And, when it comes to blows, a larger ship offers more target area.... though on the other hand a direct hit might be easier to shake off because the chances are lower for a vital component to be hit.

The energy required to accelerate Tempest's 1200 kilotonne mass at 30g for 60 seconds is 51.8 terajoules -- roughly the yield of a tactical nuclear weapon. The notion that the additional air filtration costs of a larger-volume crew section would have a meaningful impact on the combat performance or efficiency of such a system just doesn't make any kind of practical sense.

As for the idea of a larger scanner footprint, I'll repeat: the size of a Loroi ship has very little to do with the volume of its crew space, which is a minor portion of the overall structure. A version of the Tempest with a crew space one quarter the volume would not be any smaller, just a little bit skinnier in the middle. The largest portions of the vessel (the prongs and engine nacelles and struts) are almost completely uninhabited. (Not that a ship with a terajoule-per-second drive plume is a stealthy creature to begin with...)

[novius]

(Not that a ship with a terajoule-per-second drive plume is a stealthy creature to begin with...)

That could easily define battle doctrine. As in, once a combatant risks to get into the enemy's scanner range, it would be "engines on hot standby", to not to be given away by a terawatts (Joule/second) engine emission, send out the first missile volley and coast into the battlegrounds before bringing the engines back up for maneuvering when it's clear that a ship even with engines on hot standby would be detected very soon. Even if the enemy would detect a missile launch very quickly, they may still have only the missile trajectories to determine where they came from.

But of course, Loroi farseeing ability may turn around things on their ear. When they are able to scan minds, trying to be stealthy with conventional means is sort of pointless. Judging from the battle scenes, the Umiak did close in under full burn... it could their way of doing things, getting up close and personal as quickly as they can.

Unless someone finds a way to counter Loroi farseeing ability - then they might be a bit out of their water when faced with stealth tactics for some time...

[discord]

stealth does not work in space, nor does it meaningfully work for surface ships, nor aircraft, although the speed involved with aircraft means a slightly shorter distance you are detected at can actually be useful, for ground troops it CAN work though, enough clutter to hide around in.

and as mentioned, continuous nuclear blasts just makes the idea of stealth silly.... 'hurr, lets be stealthy with this new fangdangled orion drive, durr!'

[ShadowDragon8685]

stealth does not work in space, nor does it meaningfully work for surface ships, nor aircraft, although the speed involved with aircraft means a slightly shorter distance you are detected at can actually be useful, for ground troops it CAN work though, enough clutter to hide around in.

and as mentioned, continuous nuclear blasts just makes the idea of stealth silly.... 'hurr, lets be stealthy with this new fangdangled orion drive, durr!'

If everybody's eyes are on the Orion Drive ship, they're probably not going to notice the cold-gas courier coated in radar absorbent material and presenting its smallest cross-section towards them...

[Mr Bojangles]

(Not that a ship with a terajoule-per-second drive plume is a stealthy creature to begin with...)

That could easily define battle doctrine. As in, once a combatant risks to get into the enemy's scanner range, it would be "engines on hot standby", to not to be given away by a terawatts (Joule/second) engine emission, send out the first missile volley and coast into the battlegrounds before bringing the engines back up for maneuvering when it's clear that a ship even with engines on hot standby would be detected very soon. Even if the enemy would detect a missile launch very quickly, they may still have only the missile trajectories to determine where they came from.

But of course, Loroi farseeing ability may turn around things on their ear. When they are able to scan minds, trying to be stealthy with conventional means is sort of pointless. Judging from the battle scenes, the Umiak did close in under full burn... it could their way of doing things, getting up close and personal as quickly as they can.

Unless someone finds a way to counter Loroi farseeing ability - then they might be a bit out of their water when faced with stealth tactics for some time...

There is literally no such thing as stealth in space. Unless your ship systems put out so little heat that the ship can blend into the Cosmic Microwave Background, you will be detected. You don't need to be spraying terawatts of power as a drive plume to stand out; life support would be noticeable, especially to TL11 sensors.

If everybody's eyes are on the Orion Drive ship, they're probably not going to notice the cold-gas courier coated in radar absorbent material and presenting its smallest cross-section towards them...

Spot on - stealth doesn't have to mean undetectable; "less noticeable compared to other things" could be sufficient. Tactics and feints FTW.

[novius]

I know... any kind of significant energy emission would be noticeable against the background, given good enough sensors. But on the other hand, there might be some kind of "sufficiently low emissions", else Loroi would have been able to tune in to our TV about two hundred years after we blared them into space... 200 ly from Earth any sort of radio/TV signal would be lost against the background noise. At least IRL I hope so because I wouldn't like crappy sitcoms to be our calling card handed to any alien civilization.

So yes, energy-absorbent hull, radio silence and so on could help... to an extent. But it does look like neither Loroi nor Umiak have no inclination to do so.

[Razor One]

RE: TV Signals:

actually analog signals fare MUCH better on long ranges and 'decoding' interestingly enough, unless you specifically design the signals in that manner(hint, we have not most of the time), analog signals get garbled(but still sorta understandable) while digital get CRC errors and packet loss.....the much lower data density works to the favor of analog signals....and some of those early transmitters were scary powerful.

"the most powerful commercial radio station ever was WLW (700KHz AM), which during certain times in the 1930s broadcasted 500kW radiated power. At night, it covered half the globe. Neighbors within the vicinity of the transmitter heard the audio in their pots, pans, and mattresses."

that is a flipping fuckton of signal, if the combatants do not know where earth is yet, they soon will.

The inverse square law says hello.

I = P/A = P/4*PI*R^2

P = 500,000 W
A = 4 * PI * R^2 = 4 * PI * (6000 KM)^2 = 452,389,342.12 square KM

I = P/A = 500000 / 452389342.12 = 0.0011~ W / square KM, or 1.105 W / square Meter.

This of course is just for a terrestrial distance. We're talking about light years here. Two hundred of them.

1 LY = 9,460,730,472,580,800 Meters
200 LY = 1,892,146,094,516,160,000 Meters

I = P/A = P/4*PI*R^2

4 * PI * (1892146094516160000)^2 = 4.4990331728817951594980068575904e+37 (At this point, my calculator refuses to not use scientific notation)

= 500,000 / 4.4990331728817951594980068575904e+37 = 1.1113498851570630408234376076642e-32 Watts / square meter.

This is ten million times fainter than Voyager 2 (1.9 * 10^-26 W/SqM). In order to get to Voyager 2 levels of being able to hear things across this distance, you'd probably need to increase the signal power by that factor, or a signal of 5,000,000,000,000 Watts, Five trillion watts, A 5 Terawatt signal.

So let's refactor:

5000000000000 / 4.4990331728817951594980068575904e+37 = 1.1113498851570630408234376076642e-25 Watts / square meter.

The only radio telescope capable of transmitting at that level of power is Arecibo AFAIK, and only in the narrow band and not as an isotropic radiator as traditional radio and television signals. It was built in 1963. If they signalled in the precise direction of the Loroi upon the moment of completion at 5 TW, the Loroi would be able to hear it a bit better than we can hear Voyager 2. If they transmitted at the full EIRP of Arecibo, 20 TW, they'd hear that signal about half as well as we can hear Cassini.

However, Outsider's date (2160) is three years too soon for any signal to have been sent.

The chances of the Loroi ever having received signals from Earth is bupkus. Even using an extremely powerful transmitter and signalling as soon as it's complete, assuming that they even transmit in the correct direction and that the Loroi are listening for a signal let alone something they can decode and play back, they're three years away from hearing anything at all at the very best.

I wasn't kidding when I said the odds of them hearing a signal from us is astronomical. It's more likely that we've heard signals from the Loroi, since they've probably had radio longer than we have, and that we've simply missed their signals in all the noise.

[Sweforce]

stealth does not work in space, nor does it meaningfully work for surface ships, nor aircraft, although the speed involved with aircraft means a slightly shorter distance you are detected at can actually be useful, for ground troops it CAN work though, enough clutter to hide around in.

and as mentioned, continuous nuclear blasts just makes the idea of stealth silly.... 'hurr, lets be stealthy with this new fangdangled orion drive, durr!'

Decoys, set up false signal emitters. Sneak behind a planet/moon and send a decoy to leave on the other side. Or make your engine burn when behind the obscuring object and switch of before emerging into view sending a decoy in another direction. Place minefields of inactive missiles laying in wait ready to activate and fire when an enemy vessel comes close. You may be unable to be invisible but you can still do things to try to fool the enemy.

[novius]

Decoys, set up false signal emitters. Sneak behind a planet/moon and send a decoy to leave on the other side. Or make your engine burn when behind the obscuring object and switch of before emerging into view sending a decoy in another direction. Place minefields of inactive missiles laying in wait ready to activate and fire when an enemy vessel comes close. You may be unable to be invisible but you can still do things to try to fool the enemy.

Exactly. Though I don't think steath and deception would figure very much in either Loroi or Umiak battle doctrine. Sure, we've seen one engagement in the comic, and though is was some sort of "capture the flag" scenario (namely the Bellarmine wreck), the Umiak did rush in at full burn, deploy a missile volley - the Loroi themselves responding in kind - and duke it out in a furball.

With Umiak I think that deception is completely out of their mindset. They're monomaniacal and completely embedded within their Hierarchy, so even the concept of thinking beyond established paths or intentionally presenting a falsehood - which is deception all about - would throw them into a loop. Stealth of any kind, like hiding from Loroi Farseers, would be seen as 'reducing the footprint' to help move fleets around unnoticed, which may be part of established procedures.

Loroi on the other hand even detest speech as 'a means to hide or distort the truth'. They might know the concept of deception - ask any Mizol - but as it is at least very difficult to lie when using sanzai, actively using deception in warfare might be somewhat frowned upon as being 'honorless' tactics if possible at all.

I wonder what happens if humans enter the theater, especially when someone for example takes a trick out of the Babylon 5 playbook. Dump a load of mines in an asteroid field and lure in an enemy with a fake distress call... I'm pretty sure the captain in charge pulling this off might get a whole Umiak task force dusted with no losses on his own side, but it still wouldn't earn him any credits in Loroi ledgers because of using such underhanded moves.

[Mr Bojangles]

Just an FYI, we had a really big discussion on stealth, jamming and countermeasures about a year ago. Pretty much everything you're positing was discussed there, @novius and @sweforce. Suffice it to say, decoys wouldn't work, false signal emitters wouldn't work, minefields wouldn't work, any energy emission is significant and energy-absorbent hulls would only have an effect on active sensing.

If you want even more details as to why stealth won't work in space, check out this page on detection at Atomic Rockets. You may already know about Atomic Rockets; it's a pretty awesome site. Just an incredible amount of detail.

[orion1836]

stealth does not work in space, nor does it meaningfully work for surface ships, nor aircraft, although the speed involved with aircraft means a slightly shorter distance you are detected at can actually be useful, for ground troops it CAN work though, enough clutter to hide around in.

and as mentioned, continuous nuclear blasts just makes the idea of stealth silly.... 'hurr, lets be stealthy with this new fangdangled orion drive, durr!'

The SSV Normandy would beg to differ.

[Mr Bojangles]

stealth does not work in space, nor does it meaningfully work for surface ships, nor aircraft, although the speed involved with aircraft means a slightly shorter distance you are detected at can actually be useful, for ground troops it CAN work though, enough clutter to hide around in.

and as mentioned, continuous nuclear blasts just makes the idea of stealth silly.... 'hurr, lets be stealthy with this new fangdangled orion drive, durr!'

The SSV Normandy would beg to differ.

That was lampshaded in-game, though, wasn't it? Basically, if anyone looked out a window, the Normandy was right there, so it was a good thing that warships don't typically have windows.

[orion1836]

From the codex:

The Normandy's IES (internal emission sink) stealth system is her most notable feature. For centuries, it was assumed that starship stealth was impossible. The heat generated by routine shipboard operations is easily detectable against the near absolute zero background temperature of space. The Normandy, however, is able to temporarily "store" this heat in lithium heat sinks deep within the hull.

The IES stealth system has a few limitations: The system doesn't work during FTL flight because this blue-shifts the Normandy's emissions beyond the sinks' ability to store, and even while out of FTL, any visual scan (i.e. looking out of a window) will reveal her. However, this is rare since most ships rely on scanners rather than visual contact and spotting another ship in space is difficult. The Normandy can go to 'silent running' for around 2-3 hours, or drift passively through a system for days before having to vent and give away her position. The stored heat must eventually be radiated, or it will build up to levels capable of cooking the crew alive.

Still Applied Phlebotinum, but reasonable Phlebotinum at least. If such a thing were possible in the Outsider universe, I think it would be worth a try. The closest Umiak weapon range (SR2) is farther than geosynchronous orbit. Even the 830-meter Cry of the Wind would be damned hard to spot visually at that range, assuming they shut down external lights the way the Normandy is supposed to. Cruisers and below would be practically impossible to see. The 140ish-meter Normandy? Barely a speck on the starfield at that range.

[dragoongfa]

People haven't brought up the best way to actually see something in space: Ordinary visual spectrum. Even with today's space telescopes we can easily observe certain phenomena in interstellar distances.

The visual sensors of two tech levels above us should be more than sufficient to see anything and everything within a solar system provided a sensor network is established before hand. Add in computer based image analysis and filtering; nothing should then be undetectable because everything that isn't painted black actually reflects light but even if someone painted all their ships black their infrared spectrum would be easy to see due to light absorbance.

[White]

There was no equilibrium, it was cyclical. The hunter-gatherer tribal societies would start small and grow, and some of them would found permanent settlements and make some advances toward civilization. Meanwhile the wild tribes continued to grow and consume resources and fight amongst each other and raid the settlers (who usually had more food). Eventually the barbarians would destroy the settlers, and then most of those who weren't killed in the conflict would starve, and the population would collapse. Most of the progress of the settlers would be lost. Then the food flora and fauna would recover, and the hunter-gatherer population would start to grow again, and the cycle would repeat.

I was reading through the earlier posts on this page and when I saw this I wondered how it was possible that the barbrians could defeat the settlers.

If the settlers adopted agriculture, then they, I assume, should have had more specialization of labor and thus had more sophisticated technology and perhaps weaponry. Furthermore, the settlers would probably have had a higher carrying capacity and thus a larger population despite any population controlls.

If that were the case, then an army would probably have resolved the barbarian overpopulation issue.

Also, why did the loroi population collapse when it reached carrying capacity? On earth, as my limeted understanding tells me, humans and other creatures either migrated or had their population ocelate slightly around carrying capacity when they reached it.

Did the loroi gender distribution burden them with a sudden 90% increase of their just-below-carrying-capacity population? And if sudden collapse did happen, we're they relatively isolated on a planet or widespread?

Also, did telekinetic barbarian loroi essentially end up being the strongest in a might makes right world? Were they perhaps worshiped? (I know false gods wouldn't make it if they faked their belief in themselves, but a loroi who grew up with such great power might grow up to truly believe they were devine.)

Finally, at what stage of civilization would a strong telekinetic no longer be greatly free to act outside of the general societies will. For example: robbing someone and actually being punished.

[dragoongfa]

@White

In regards to: Agriculture equals higher tech and higher numbers.

With the same logic the Greeks and Romans would have steamrolled their northern barbarians with ease, they wouldn't have faced centuries of war and raiding until the Romans conquered large parts of Europe (except North Eastern Europe), and then were themselves attacked and fell by the Huns who themselves were far east barbarians migrating west for better pastures.

At such low tech levels the tech disparity isn't enough to guarantee much of an advantage in such conflicts while the ludicrous Loroi reproductive rate allows for a practical multiplication of the Loroi population in the span of a decade. Not just doubling but actual multiplication by a factor that could theoretically go higher than ten if every Loroi able to bear a child gives birth once an year.

EDIT: In short the Agricultural Loroi would face a huge numerical disadvantage since they would have planned their population growth to go side by side their food production output. But the Barbarians? If they crap out kids as fast as their biology allows them then they would make rats seem infertile in comparison

[Arioch]

There was no equilibrium, it was cyclical. The hunter-gatherer tribal societies would start small and grow, and some of them would found permanent settlements and make some advances toward civilization. Meanwhile the wild tribes continued to grow and consume resources and fight amongst each other and raid the settlers (who usually had more food). Eventually the barbarians would destroy the settlers, and then most of those who weren't killed in the conflict would starve, and the population would collapse. Most of the progress of the settlers would be lost. Then the food flora and fauna would recover, and the hunter-gatherer population would start to grow again, and the cycle would repeat.

I was reading through the earlier posts on this page and when I saw this I wondered how it was possible that the barbrians could defeat the settlers.

If the settlers adopted agriculture, then they, I assume, should have had more specialization of labor and thus had more sophisticated technology and perhaps weaponry. Furthermore, the settlers would probably have had a higher carrying capacity and thus a larger population despite any population controlls.

If that were the case, then an army would probably have resolved the barbarian overpopulation issue.

Also, why did the loroi population collapse when it reached carrying capacity? On earth, as my limeted understanding tells me, humans and other creatures either migrated or had their population ocelate slightly around carrying capacity when they reached it.

Did the loroi gender distribution burden them with a sudden 90% increase of their just-below-carrying-capacity population? And if sudden collapse did happen, we're they relatively isolated on a planet or widespread?

After Deinar's ecological systems had recovered sufficiently from the bombardments, and the survivors had learned some low-tech survival skills, what you had were groups of semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. These tribes differed from comparable neolithic human societies in two important ways:

• These early Loroi hunter-gatherers were descendants of an ultra-tech society and had very few cultural traditions designed to help them cope in a primitive world. They were good hunters and survivalists, and still had access to salvaged high-tech gear like ceramic blades, but lacked the skills to make even stone tools, and lacked the cultural know-how to do things that neolithic humans would have taken for granted. Perhaps most significantly, they had no traditional schemes for controlling their own population growth. Each Loroi tribe had to learn from scratch, and every time a tribe was wiped out, that accumulated knowledge was lost.
• Loroi can reproduce at essentially four times the rate that humans can; the percentage of childbearing females is almost twice as large and the generations are half as long. Though Deinar is cold and arid, the local flora and fauna are gene-tailored superfoods, and so under the right conditions even hunter-gatherers can produce a lot of food, and so will reproduce rapidly. Groups may migrate and split as they grow, but they will rapidly fill any landscape and exhaust local resources; eventual population collapse through starvation or warfare (or both) is inevitable. Then the animal and plant resources will recover, and the cycle will begin again. No human culture has ever had to cope with this kind of explosive population pressure.

Now, let's consider an early Loroi agricultural settlement. We're not talking Greeks or Romans here; these are just groups of hunter-gatherers who have settled, often near the ruins of Soia-era settlements from which they can learn some basic techniques about calendars and building structures, and over the course of a few generations develop pastoralism and primitive agriculture. They may even develop some traditions for controlling their own population growth. They become farmers rather than hunters.

Meanwhile, the neighboring hunter-gatherer tribes have been growing and depleting the local game and wild grain; they have essentially become a vast wandering army that's rapidly running out of food. But look -- there's a settlement of farmers with livestock and granaries! Both sides have similar salvaged ceramic weapons, but the hunters will have better fighting skills than the farmers and will probably vastly outnumber them. Even if a farmer group successfully defends against the first attack, telepathic word will spread far and wide to the other starving barbarian hordes that there's a peach ripe for plucking.

It was not until the development of the caste system, which allowed even the hunter-gatherers to control their own population growth, and the development of iron working, which allowed the settlements to better defend what they had built, that civilization was able to take root and break the cycle.

Also, did telekinetic barbarian loroi essentially end up being the strongest in a might makes right world? Were they perhaps worshiped? (I know false gods wouldn't make it if they faked their belief in themselves, but a loroi who grew up with such great power might grow up to truly believe they were devine.)

Finally, at what stage of civilization would a strong telekinetic no longer be greatly free to act outside of the general societies will. For example: robbing someone and actually being punished.

Such tribes are usually led by the strongest among them, and having superior telepathic or psychokinetic abilities would definitely give one a significant leg up in this contest. However, psi power doesn't make one invincible; even Fireblade can be killed by an unexpected spear in the back. Might makes right in primitive societies, but leadership skills are as important as individual fighting ability when it comes to establishing and maintaining power.

[novius]

Population growth can be described with differential equations, AFAIK, meaning the rate in absolute figures is defined by the actual number of people any given point of time. And they do have the tendency to behave quite unpredictable.

Set the parameters right and you would have an oscillation in population numbers, especially if you set the reproduction rate quite high. In layman's terms, the population numbers would quickly 'overshoot' the sustainability and continue to rise for a bit until the limitation of resources makes itself known by starvation.

For a visual representation, look up Wator and try to fiddle with the numbers.

[Absalom]

Then add the occasional drought or similar, and realize that you can make it even worse: as the Australian Rat Plagues demonstrate, a sufficiently extended period of plenty can result in a significantly larger than normal population, and then swing you below the average carrying capacity, thereby incurring this on even semi-restrained populations. When you consider that the Earth at least has climate cycles in both the 100-year and 1000-year ranges, and that the Mongols were a threat to Medieval Europe despite not using as heavy of armor, and it becomes easy to see how a civilization could just be getting started, or even have been around for a while, only to get knocked out by a sudden aggressive migration.

[White]

It was not until the development of the caste system, which allowed even the hunter-gatherers to control their own population growth, and the development of iron working, which allowed the settlements to better defend what they had built, that civilization was able to take root and break the cycle.

Is it known what happened on that particular cycle that pushed barbarians to adopt a caste system?

It seems that this over population issue with the barbarians is a tragedy of the commons type scenario that generally can't be resolved without some foresight (or knowledge of the past), jolly old co-operation, and maybe a higher authority to keep all parties in line.

These elements seem to be in short supply at the time.